


gratuitous

by crookedmouth



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Abuse, Alternative Bad Ending AU, Anal, Blood and Injury, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Force-Feeding, Gang Rape, Grimdark, Guaranteed the most vile thing I have ever written, In Zhao's Words: That's a Lot of Damage, M/M, Multi, Other, Period-Typical Homophobia, Prison, prison rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:34:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29016672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedmouth/pseuds/crookedmouth
Summary: In another version of events, perhaps, someone comes to his aid. Someone saves him, and he does not have to face degradation again, and again, and again. This is not that story.
Relationships: Ozai/Prison Guards
Comments: 15
Kudos: 23





	1. extra portion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [For a Fellow Inmate](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=For+a+Fellow+Inmate).



> A requested alternative ending to another piece of my writing, in which things take an even darker turn for Ozai in prison. This first chapter was not part of the original request, but came about organically and has been included here as a bonus.   
> Writing this was a challenge and certainly took me outside of my comfort zone on numerous occasions, and I'm still not entirely sure I've managed to portray the overall concept as it was envisioned, but I suppose I can always come back and edit.

Prison is not meant to be a comfortable experience. If one is lucky and, perhaps, blessed with a latent sense of integrity, it has the potential to be a rehabilitative place, but far more often it is simply cold, dirty, and humiliating.

In the beginning, Ozai bides his time. He endures the wretched conditions with watchful eyes and a barbed mind – committing guards’ faces to memory and listening as acutely as possible to the whispers of gossip that slip beneath his cell door. Anything to maintain an edge. It doesn’t take long for him to find sympathizers and supporters – the one warden, in particular, is eager to please – and from there it is simply a matter of bullying and blackmailing the other guards into some semblance of an escape plan.

Then it fails, his contacts are removed, and he is left worse off than he began. 

After the anger and the sheer bloody seething disappointment – the sense of betrayal at the hands of incompetents as well as the universe itself – the fallen Phoenix King finds himself staring down the desolate blade of dwindled options. Stripped of his bending, his throne, and now any hope of retribution or escape, it is as though a cloud crosses over his mind, enveloping it in a dark haze.

He drifts for a few weeks, staring listlessly into the shadows of his cell, unspeaking even in response to the occasional retort from guards bringing his food or wash basin. It is during this period he begins the slow process of starving himself. 

Even that is denied him.

The first few dishes of uneaten food go unremarked upon, but eventually the pattern asserts itself, and the prison physician is brought in. A woman of average height, average size, there are only two remarkable things about her – her hair, pulled back in a bun so severe it seems to tighten even the skin of her face, and her eyes, the same colour as steel. 

She examines Ozai under the pretense of routine, slender fingers tracing over ribs, pressing into the flesh of his neck searching out his pulse. It becomes a matter of prison legend when she actually grips the former Fire Lord by the chin, holds him still – like a petulant child or an unruly mount – and stares him in the eye for a solid minute. He complies with unusual obedience, blinking slowly and sardonically, but refuses to answer any questions.

It occurs to him during that moment that he could break any part of her body if he wanted – from a single finger to her neck – but the satisfaction of his defiant self-destruction is somehow greater, a form of power that no mere physician, nor his son, not even the Avatar, can wrench from him. 

The physician drops her hand from his chin and departs, having ascertained all she needs to know.

The guards are advised to continue with their duties as prescribed, but not to worry about the stubbornly untouched food. They will report to her following each meal, and will otherwise watch and wait. They are to duck away from the thrown bowls of rice and overcooked, wilted vegetables, but may cease to bother bringing him meat – knowing, as they all do, that it will only go to waste. 

The physician allows Ozai’s attempted annihilation to bring him to the point of lethargy.

When, at long last, he struggles to stand or move with coherent intent, she has him wrestled into another cell where there is a chair with a great many restraints – one most notably to keep the head in place. Ozai resists as best as he is able, but recognizes the advantage he has inadvertently handed his jailors, weakened as he is with hunger. It takes two guards, but they are able to fasten him tightly to the chair. Had his mind not been mired in fog, it would have taken more. The discomfort is immediate, the leather band encircling his forehead forcing him to look up, his neck tilted back and throat exposed.

Her charge secured, the physician thrusts her hands into a pair of gauntlets, and begins the horrid work of opening Ozai’s jaw. She works by feel, staring at his amber eyes the entire time.

“You should know something about me, Ozai,” she says in a voice of practiced evenness, smooth and unthreatening as a piece of drift glass found along the shore. “I used to be a mother.”

He growls around her gloved fingers, already beginning to feel the muscles of his jaw tire with the effort of staying clamped shut.

“It’s true,” she responds, hooking her fingers between his lips and forcing them into the gap between gums and molars, stretching his lips painfully in the process. Ozai can feel his control slipping, and then with a gargle of defeat, his mouth opens, and the woman proceeds to shove her entire gauntleted fist into his mouth while she reaches for a metal device on the small tray beside her.

“My son was in the 41st Division.”

The device serves much the same purpose as her fist, cold metal fitting uncomfortably around his teeth, chafing his gums, forcing his jaws apart. A portion of it bumps against the back of his throat, making him gag and retch. The physician watches him coolly, then adjusts the device. Ozai stares at her, his eyes burning and his body taut with panic.

She holds up a length of leather, a strangely crafted hollow tube just thick enough to hold its shape, eyeing it with bored consideration.

“Of course, I didn’t realize until after he didn’t come home... well, until _none_ of them came home... that _that_ was what the Agni Kai was about. That your decision to have all those boys slaughtered was something worth burning your own son over.”

The physician fits one end of the hose into the gap of the metal device, carefully and altogether too _slowly_ spooling it into Ozai’s mouth until it presses against the back of his throat. His hands clench and claw against the armrests they are bound to, his heels digging in futilely against the floor – which, naturally, the chair is bolted down to.

The angle of his neck only alleviates the tube’s passage into his throat so much.

“Normally I’d admire a man with convictions that strong.” The woman could just as easily be explaining the proper way to fold silk, so calm and unperturbed is her tone.

The tube continues its painful sliding, down, down, until at last the physician stops and allows Ozai a moment to adjust, his chest rising and falling with rapid, shallow breaths through the nose.

“Lhao,” she asks one of the guards, “could you hold this for a moment?”

The guard – a smallish man – steps forward and replaces her hold on the hose. He eyes the former Fire Lord with poorly-disguised delight, dark eyes smoldering with a cruel warmth. Then the physician fixes a funnel into the end of the tube, the motion causing the length of it to twist and wriggle uncomfortably inside him. Despite himself, Ozai makes a whining noise of concern, the usual stubborn inhibitions of his pride thoroughly overcome by his weakened state.

The woman looks down at him, her expression _almost_ soft, _almost_ fond.

“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll live. That’s the point.”

And then she pours an absolute slop of wet congee into the funnel.

He can feel the tube grow turgid inside him, gently stretching the flesh of his throat and esophagus as the congee makes its descent. It’s warm, thankfully not to the point of burning, but there is still the sickly sensation of fluid spreading as it breaches his stomach and leaks down the walls.

Everything about it is unnatural, is painful, and his body tries to fight it. He is choking, he can’t breathe, there is something inside of him that does not belong, needs to be removed… Only his incredible control keeps him from vomiting – Ozai cannot imagine how disastrous it would be should his stomach reject the congee and attempt to send it upwards with the tube still inserted in him – and only the restraints keep him from ripping the Agni-damned thing out.

Though he can smell it, he can’t taste the congee. The only thing he can taste is blood, and bitter leather.

The physician and the two guards watch in silence as the funnel drains. Once it appears to be mostly empty, the physician takes a pitcher of water and rinses the walls of the funnel, letting the liquid swirl away loose grains of rice down into Ozai’s now painfully full stomach. He feels bloated, stretched, after so many days of starving himself. The congee is unexpectedly heavy, constantly threatening to rise back up and out.

Ozai blinks, feeling tears he cannot control stream down his face. His body is riotous, but so is his mind. The humiliation and torment of this invasion of himself is wretched enough as it is, but it is compounded by its true purpose, depriving him of his ultimate escape. His earlier despondency is replaced by a wholly new black rage. He envisions breaking the physician's slender, treacherous fingers one by one, snapping them at each knuckle. The uncomfortable warmth in his belly is reimagined as the tangled mess of her intestines, slowly unspooled from her body, steaming as they spill through his hands onto the floor. He doesn't want her to live - just wants her to live long enough. 

The funnel is removed but the tube and the contraption keeping his mouth ajar are left in for several more minutes, allowing the physician her satisfaction that the congee will stay in place. When at long last she begins to pull the tube away, it scrapes against Ozai’s innards with every inch, causing him to scrabble and slam his palms against the armrests repeatedly. He watches as the final length of it is extracted, the entirety of the hose smeared with a marbled coating of thick mucus and blood.

Through his coughing and furious splutters, the metal holding his jaw open is finally removed, and a similar mixture of reddened spittle spills down his lower lip and chin inelegantly.

Despite the discomfort of his raw throat, he gasps deeply, in and out, mind reeling with what has just happened. It is – well, _was_ – unthinkable that such a thing could ever have been done to him, and this only serves to further his hatred of the grey-eyed woman. Somehow, someway, he's going to kill her. 

The physician removes her gauntlets almost delicately, dropping them on the tray alongside the fouled tube and funnel. She moves behind Ozai so that he can look up at her from his tilted position within the chair without straining his eyes. Such a strange courtesy, after what she has just done to him.

“There now,” she practically coos, as if speaking to an unruly child exhausted from a tantrum, “that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Ozai snarls, a threat of just how hard she might find things if he weren’t tied down building between his teeth, but she pats him on the shoulder in clear warning.

“We can leave it in, you know,” she continues conversationally, “keep your hands behind your back so you don’t yank it out. Maybe keep you in this chair, strapped down like a toddler. Take away your choice in the matter entirely.”

Her hands move impossibly quick, no longer a seemingly gentle pat but a sharp strike – _thok thok!_ – and Ozai feels himself slump within his restraints. Whatever pressure points her fingertips have found, he has no doubt there will be bruises come the morrow.

“Or…” she adds, leaning down close to his ear, “you can eat like a good little bird and we will never have to do this again.” 

Ozai croaks wordlessly at her, his tongue apparently just as much affected as the other muscles of his body. She nods her head as though accepting an answer, and then the guards unfasten his restraints and drag him away.

When food is presented to him the following day, he takes it without complaint or comment, every swallow uncomfortable, each morsel of masticated rice that descends his ravaged throat threatening to be the one that sends his gut into vomitous revolt.

He refuses to dignify the experience by asking whether or not his son is aware that it happened. Refuses to ask if, perhaps, Zuko had even ordered it done.

Ozai can’t touch congee after that, however. It is the only dish his guards return with, untouched. 

The physician allows it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The actual requested chapter, in which Ozai comes to the terrifying conclusion he's no longer the most volatile man in the room.  
> Updated Feb. 26/2021 by request, because apparently it wasn't awful enough the first time.

Nearly two years later, the abuse begins. In some ways, Ozai is surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.

He recognizes that his treatment goes beyond the usual punitive measures when he is presented not with a bowl of rice, but a bowl of _moldy_ congee. The guards had long since done away with even bringing him the stuff once it became evident he would not touch it – instead distributing the portion among themselves if it was particularly appetizing, but more often than not bestowing the extra to prisoners displaying better behaviour.

The smell is enough to make him retch, and in a fit of poorly-considered rebellion, he kicks the bowl, sending it skittering across his cell, the congee splattering a thick path along the floor. It takes days for the reek to fade.

That first bowl of spoiled food is followed by the refusal to offer a clean smock for over his tattered pants. Ozai narrows his eyes at the guard – a firebender with a patch over one eye – and when no garment is placed in his outstretched hand, he gives the other man an ugly smile and a nod to let him know the game has been acknowledged.

 _Let them play_ , he thinks. If he gets too thin, that bitch of a physician will know. She might come and have him strapped into the chair again, but she won’t let him die.

It’s absurd that he finds solace in that knowledge, but he does, even as he shivers in his cell at night, knees drawn up to his chest like a child.

Except that the physician hasn’t been to see him in months, and after three days of outright rotten and otherwise withheld food, Ozai realizes she isn’t coming. The hunger makes him irrational, stokes the fire of his ill-temper, but even after only three days of an empty stomach he is already beginning to feel dizzy when he stands up, has some difficulty keeping focus on his thoughts. 

He thinks back through that barren haze, calculates that the steely-eyed physician’s disappearance aligns, roughly, with the replacement of his guards.

That evening after his realization, one of the new guards – the big one, Yueh – throws a bucket of water at Ozai through the bars of his cage. He wakens with a snarl, drenched hair whipping back as he hurls his body into an offensive stance, still shaping himself as though to bend fire even several years after his defeat at the Avatar’s hands.

Yueh chuckles, a deep rumble that puts Ozai in mind of a komodo-rhino, and then the hulking man leaves. The former Fire Lord huffs, his chest heaving up and down as he regains some composure, blinking away the moisture than clings to his long eyelashes. He squeezes the water from his hair, sluices what he can from his shoulders and chest, removes his sopping pants to wring them out and then hangs them to dry on the bars of his cage.

He shivers and trembles the rest of the night, barely slipping into sleep for more than a few moments at a time before his body forces him awake again with a violent contraction of muscle. His mind whirrs with furious thoughts, the hungry twinge of his stomach and the betrayal of the physician’s absence all twisting together until, even if his body were to cooperate, the wretched chatter behind his eyes would forbid sleep all on its own.

The next night he is kept awake for an entirely different reason.

Exhausted by his previous deprivation, Ozai’s eyelids fall closed readily enough. He embraces the oblivion, for his hunger is also less once he abandons waking consciousness, and rage exhausts him now in a way it never did when he had his inner fire. Then the sound of footsteps breaks through, the weight of a man settling onto a stool, the whisper-soft rustle of fabric furtively shoved aside.

All of this he could – and attempts to – sleep through.

Then the other sounds creep into his ears.

It ought to be unmistakable, really, but he’s just tired enough, just impaired enough by hunger and fatigue, to not make sense of the grunting and subtle, fleshy _shluff-shluff-shluff_ coming from the corner of his cell. Then the sounds quicken, worsen, become a frenzied slapping, and he realizes that he’s listening to another man jerk himself to completion.

Ozai’s immediate – and, perhaps, most obvious – reaction is to get as far away as possible. His eyes snap open, his muscles taut, and he launches himself up and into the opposite corner.

“What in all the blistering hells is wrong with you?” he hisses at the other man, breaking the long silence he has maintained between himself and his jailors.

It is a legitimate question. Unless his son has lifted Sozin’s prohibition, it would not take much to construe the guard’s actions as that of a man who lusted after other men. A particularly zealous guard might hear or see, might report the behaviour. Ozai, of course, does not care if the man fucking into his own fist faces any consequences – indeed, he rather hopes that someone else will walk by and catch him in the act – but the absurdity of the situation, the sheer disregard for repercussion… Agni, it’s bold.

The guard says nothing in response, his face obscured by the dark, merely pumps his wrist with even greater fervor.

Far from baffled, a cold stone of understanding sinks all the way down into Ozai’s bowels.

The guard lets out a groan through gritted teeth, the wooden legs of the stool screeching softly as his hips stutter, and then there comes a series of quiet, piddling splats as the man empties himself onto the floor. And that’s it. No snide commentary, no laughter. The only point he’s come to prove is that he _can_.

The guard rights his uniform trousers and leaves in the same silence that he entered. Morbidly, Ozai thinks of the stain of moldy congee, imagining that the guard’s semen must make a similar trail along the uneven floor.

He passes a hand over his eyes, clenching his jaw.

He is tired and hungry and now all he can hear is the pounding of his own heart in his ears. He is furious at not only the barbarism of his treatment but also the possibility that his son – his _righteous_ and _peace-loving_ son – might be aware of this shift and doing absolutely nothing. It is a betrayal difficult to find words for, and above all, comes utterly unexpected. Ozai has always seen the boy’s weakness, his unshakeable sense of honour, as a thing to be counted on and controlled. Without it, much like the physician’s absence, he has nothing, no assurances, no certainties.

Ozai lets out a cynical snort into the dark, sinking down to sit with his back against the cold stones. To think that the Fire Nation’s new and virtuous ruler would be corrupt enough to allow such abuses – against his own father, no less! – would have scandalized the people. It would have been ironic to the point of deliciousness had he not been on the receiving end of it.

It would have been something he could twist and use, were it not several years too late. 

The next night, it’s not just one guard who creeps into his room, but four.

“Little bird, little bird,” croons the man at their head, a firebending guard that Ozai remembers is named Kyeong. “Time to sing.”

Ozai backs himself against the wall, taking stock of the guards. He recognizes them all. There is Yueh, as dim-witted as he is big, the one-eyed firebender, and smiling unpleasantly from over Kyeong’s shoulder is Lhao. The man’s dark eyes have the same cruel glint as when the physician had her tube down Ozai’s throat. A part of him suspects it was Lhao stroking himself the previous night, and another, darker part of himself wonders if merely inducing fear is enough to actually get the other man off. Somehow, he doubts it.

“Come to clean up your mess?” he challenges, jutting his chin in the direction of the stains, looking much like lines of dried milk.

Kyeong smirks.

“Such a state you’ve left your cage in, dirty little bird. We can’t let that go unpunished, now can we?”

Agni, he’s a punchable little shit.

Lhao says something to Yueh, too quiet to hear, and the large man turns to close the cell door behind them. The one-eyed guard lights both his fists into burning balls, flicking them out to the unlit torches in sconces along the walls of Ozai’s cell. They crackle to life, casting everything in a dim, dancing orange glow.

Kyeong jangles a ring of keys, making an overdramatic show of sorting through them before finding the correct one. This he waggles – as though dangling a bone in front of a goatdog – before inserting it into the cage door, the tumblers of the lock falling into place with a chilling _clink._

Ozai shifts his feet, flexing his bare toes against the ground for the greatest traction. He’ll need to move quickly, and though he welcomes the chance to take a swing at each and every one of these men, his body is already plaintive. It may be wiser to simply try for escape. 

With a flamboyant sweep of his arm, Kyeong wrenches the cage door open, metal hinges squealing in protest. Ozai launches himself before the guard can take his hand from the door, bowling the man over and making for the closed cell door. Yueh catches him by the throat, winding him.

He grasps the man’s extended forearm for leverage, then kicks, ignoring the harsh pressure of enormous fingers around his neck. His foot finds its mark, a cheap shot right between the larger man’s legs, and Yueh’s eyes nearly cross, his hand at Ozai’s throat going slack.

There is raucous noise around him. Yueh’s wheezing breaths, Kyeong’s cackling from the floor, a sizzling roar as the one-eyed guard summons a length of flame from his palm like a whip. And then,

“Ah ah ahh…” Lhao admonishes, in a singsong voice, and the tongue of fire licks a searing line across Ozai’s back. He strangles the howl before it can leave him, clamping down his jaw and flaring his nostrils. He twists to face the guards, stumbling backwards towards the cell door. Kyeong scurries towards him, grabs him by the waist, drags them both down to the ground where Ozai rolls and thrashes and kicks – at one point even biting the other man, he thinks. There is no room left in his brain for strategy or form or anything other than fleeing his cell, really.

With a proper night’s rest, a stomach unshrunk, it would not have strained possibility for him to beat all four of these men, even without his bending. But the ground spins unnaturally beneath him if he moves too quickly, and though the adrenaline coursing through him now forbids it, his eyelids are leaden enough to close on their own.

It was clever of them, really, to weaken him like this. Strip away the advantage of his size, his sheer physical strength. He might have been able to appreciate that kind of insidious forethought, were he not on the receiving end of it. 

The two men roll, and with great effort Ozai finds himself on top of Kyeong, straddling him, smashing his fist against the guard’s face once, twice. Kyeong manages to catch his next swing, squeezing between Ozai’s knuckles, and the former Fire Lord can feel the sudden inappropriate swelling of the other man’s cock against his leg.

He blinks, a momentary stunned pause, and then he is dragged back by his hair.

He expects a battery of fists, and though one does land squarely in his stomach, bending him over, that’s it. The hand gripping his hair – Yueh, he suspects – releases him so he might double over and gasp, a strand of spit dangling from where it was forced out of his mouth by the blow.

“Not very good at flying, little bird,” Kyeong sneers.

Ozai snarls, lunges, is again evaded. The one-eyed firebender cracks him across the cheekbone. He pivots and tries a powerful kick in Lhao’s direction, clipping the man in the chest, but failing to find his intended mark against his chin. Lhao grunts and stumbles back. Kyeong sends a series of sparks rippling across the floor, burning Ozai’s bare feet, and he is forced to leap back. Yueh pushes him forward, hard enough to nearly make his knees give out.

This goes on for several minutes, the guards circling their prisoner and pushing him about like schoolboys in a field. By the time Kyeong tells Yueh to restrain him, Ozai’s lip is split and bloody, the one-eyed guard has a loosened tooth, and Lhao is bleeding from a small cut on his forehead – but that is all. Battered knuckles, maybe a darkened eye come morning. 

None of Ozai’s blows have landed as they should, and not one of the four men has seemed much interested in beating him beyond a basic roughing up. That in itself is a threat of sorts. Or a promise.

Yueh’s crushing grip on Ozai’s arms forces him down, onto his knees, and then Lhao comes behind him and secures a pair of manacles around his wrists. The big guard’s hands move to Ozai’s shoulders, heavy as bricks, holding him in place. 

The cell is filled with the sound of ragged breathing, the four guards grinning at each other over Ozai’s head, the prisoner panting and trying to steel himself for whatever is coming next. He knows, and also does not want to, rejects the certainty of it.

There are simply some realities which he doubts anyone is prepared to accept for themselves. Hearing that he was to be a father had been similar for him, though of course that title had borne much more positive connotations than his current circumstance.

He had been a ruler, the head of a nation, the most powerful man in the world. Now he is just a prisoner, just a man, about to meet his ignominious end in a cell. About to be raped.

Ozai tells himself that the nauseous wetness at the back of his mouth in the result of his bloodied lip.

“There, now,” Kyeong claps his hands together, rubbing them in anticipation as he saunters forward. “Nothing like a brawl to get the blood flowing.” He leers down at Ozai, patting the man’s face roughly.

“Still need that song from you, though.”

“Hard to sing if his mouth is full,” Lhao says murderously from behind him.

 _Just try_ , Ozai thinks to himself. _I’ve still got teeth_.

Then, as though spurned on by his unspoken thoughts, Kyeong undoes the ties of his trousers, releasing himself, already hard and twitching.

His situation is unavoidable in that moment, the truth of it made self-evident, and still some depraved part of him causes Ozai to glare at the other man’s member, then raise his eyes and snort derisively, unimpressed. Kyeong grins as though pleased beyond belief, one hand languidly stroking up and down.

“Ohh…” he moues exaggeratedly, casting a glance at his fellow guards as though in search of sympathy. “Little bird doesn’t like what he sees. What is it? My worm not _fat_ enough for you? Not _long_ enough? Don’t worry, you’ll get your fill tonight.”

The guard steps towards him, and Ozai jerks, his knees aching and his shoulders tense within Yueh’s resolute grasp. Another step, and then he can smell Kyeong, can feel the sickly heat radiating from the younger man’s exposed crotch. His stomach roils, the image of the physician prying his jaws open replays in the back of his mind, and then suddenly Kyeong’s hand has lifted from its ministrations and joins its fellow on Ozai’s face. He grips the former Fire Lord’s head, fingers tangled in mussed and sweaty black hair, thumbs tracing circles against the velvet smooth skin of Ozai’s eyelids.

Ozai can feel a faint warmth spreading from Kyeong’s thumbs, and he recalls that the man can firebend. A shiver runs through him, and he jerks again, trying desperately to get his legs from under him. Not being able to see – to suddenly have his hearing and his other senses heightened – somehow only serves to make the whole thing worse, accentuates his sense of vulnerability. The warmth becomes a sting, Kyeong adding just enough pressure that Ozai can feel the soft meat of his eyeballs compress a little.

“You so much as scrape your teeth against me, I’ll pop your eyes like grapes off the vine.”

The other guards hoot and guffaw, and Ozai realizes he is trembling. From rage and indignation and self-righteous affront, yes, but also alarm.

Before him, Kyeong shifts, bends his knees, and then his hips are jutted forward and the tip of him collides with Ozai’s mouth. Instinct threatens in that very moment to wrench his face away, but the guard’s near-burning hands steady him, and with a truly wrecked growl of frustration and defeat, Ozai parts his lips. 

His body revolts immediately, mouth flooding in the way it does before a bout of nausea, stomach muscles clenching, threatening to hurl forth non-existent contents. The other man tastes of salty sweat and bitter musk, wholly unpleasant, and stupidly Ozai’s mind spits out the observation that it feels much bigger in his mouth than it looks. 

Above him Kyeong makes an approving grunt, tightening the pressure of his palms against the side of Ozai’s head, pulling him closer until the tip of his nose grazes coarse hair. Ozai stiffens, the muscles in his neck tightening stubbornly, but the more he resists the harsher Kyeong yanks and wrenches.

It is a matter of survival, he tells himself, over and over, as the guard rolls and thrusts his hips, conjuring up all the horrid memories of the force-feeding some years earlier. This is no slim leather tube, however, and before long he is gagging, involuntary tears streaming from his eyes, his bound hands squeezing and pushing and dragging against whatever part of Yueh his back is up against – the man’s legs, he hopes – desperate for anything to steady himself with. His neck aches, as do his knees. 

He cannot die on this prison floor without being able to avenge himself, so he must survive, must endure and live through this. Even though the revulsion that washes over him, the degradation of it, is nearly as blinding as the pressure of Kyeong’s thumbs over his eyes.

His jaw _hurts_ yet Kyeong only fucks his face harder, and Ozai wonders if the guard realizes just how much he is struggling to breathe, unable to find a steady pace through his nose. The sounds of the other men are muffled through Kyeong’s grip on his head, palms pressed against his ears, but he suspects they’re laughing. His own noises are equally stifled, reflexive gasps and whines and suppressed retches as his nose is crushed against the hard ridge of the guard’s abdomen, the head of the other man’s cock nudging the back of his throat.

Dignity has fled the matter entirely, and Ozai can feel the stream of spit that escapes the pool of his mouth dribbling down his chin, his neck, onto his bare chest. Such an incredible amount of moisture. But he can’t bring himself to try and suck it back, keep it in his mouth, because doing so would be a participation of sorts, would necessitate the hollowing of his cheeks. The degradation of being made a hole is sufficient as it is, he does not need to add to it through his own actions. 

He’d be mad with fury if he could just focus his mind on anything other than getting enough air into his lungs.

Kyeong’s grip on his face tightens without warning, a feral note to his grunts and groans, and Ozai knows in a distinctly masculine way what is about to happen and stiffens, his whole body straining with the effort of distancing himself. Not that he’s able.

The guard ruts violently one last time into Ozai’s mouth, and then he spills, the pulsations strange and foreign against his tongue and lips. The former Fire Lord doesn’t even try to contain the warm pool of cum in his mouth, his jaw held so loosely open that it streams out almost instantly, watered down with his own drool.

He spits reflexively as soon as Kyeong withdraws, and then gasps in as much air as he possibly can between a series of wet, hacking coughs.

“Well,” Kyeong pants, “it’s certainly a start.”

Ozai swallows down the impulse to vomit, scraping his tongue against the bottom of his teeth, trying to shave away the taste of the other man in his mouth. He’s not sure why his body responds with fear, with revulsion – it is not as though he did not understand that this was to be the way of things – yet there it is. He does not want to face down another episode of choking, of having to struggle for breath through his nose, of holding his jaw so widely it burns and aches.

“No,” he rasps hoarsely, and Yueh’s meaty hands clench tighter around his shoulders at the utterance, as though trying to squeeze louder sound out of him.

The four men chuckle. And then they decide who ought to go next.

By the time they are finished with his mouth, Lhao has bruised Ozai’s face with a wanton strike, and red marks from all ten of the one-eyed firebender’s fingertips can be counted along the flesh of his neck. Yueh has had to endure being retched upon repeatedly, the large man’s erection routinely hitting a spot at the back of Ozai’s throat that sends his entire body in revolt. He collapses, ill from the bitter salt taste of it all – in his mouth, somehow up into his nose, splattered across his face – and curls inwards on himself, quivering.

He just wants to be elsewhere, away.

Kyeong runs a soothing hand along Ozai’s back, his palm warm, fingertips delicately grazing over the fine sheen of sweat that coats his skin. It’s an impossibly gentle touch, after everything. Despite himself, Ozai can feel his muscles relax after the initial flinch at the contact. Aside from the physician’s examinations, he cannot remember the last time a hand has been placed on him with any sort of comfort or reassurance in mind. His flesh almost welcomes the touch, as if starved of it.

Ozai groans, as much in panic as in exhaustion and shame.

“Not bad,” Kyeong praises him, the pressure of his hand increasing until it is a dragging claw against Ozai’s spine, “but we’re not finished, little bird. You need some tailfeathers, yet.”

The former Fire Lord’s hands ball into fists in their restraints, and he struggles to right himself, to crawl or limp or simply drag himself across the floor in an attempt to get away from the guard. Kyeong makes an animalistic noise of delight and uses Ozai’s desperate momentum against him, grasping the waistline of his tattered prison pants as he moves, dragging them down his legs to expose his buttocks and thighs.

The shock of cold air against his naked flesh is almost pleasant – it seems to momentarily clear Ozai’s mind of the hungry, sleep-deprived haze that clouds it – except that in shooting him through with lucidity he is forced to confront his reality, made to contend all too tangibly with the events of the past several hours and days. He flinches, willfully, instinctively, and then the guards are restraining him further – a pair of hands tight behind each knee, forcing his legs apart, another set cupped around his ears, guiding his forehead to the floor.

Nevermind the humiliation the Avatar dealt him the day of Sozin’s Comet, sprawled out on a stone pillar high above the ground, delirious and bereft of his firebending. _This_ is by far the most appalling situation he has ever found himself in – ass in the air and caged by the bodies of four other men, all of whom have already desecrated his mouth with their use. His ears thunder anew with the drum of his own pulse, palms and underarms slickening with panicked sweat. 

“Don’t…” he grinds out weakly into the floor, his hair a tattered black curtain hiding him from view.

A part of him that seems to have successfully removed itself from reality wonders, bluntly, why he is so determined to cling to life in these pathetic moments – why he has allowed what has happened in the name of surviving. What hope does he have, really, of reaping vengeance against these assailants? Why cling to existence at all? He was starving himself and ready for destruction two years ago, and his circumstances have not improved. Surely survival is no longer necessary? 

He doesn’t know, doesn’t have answers. His wrath is all tangled within him now, veering inward at his own wretchedness, his own failure. 

Kyeong scratches his fingernails down Ozai’s now bowed back, then over the curve of his ass, sending gooseflesh across his skin. Ozai’s own nails scrape against the empty air, sparks firing at the base of his spine. Hidden by his hair, his golden eyes widen in consternation. He does not like how Kyeong is touching him, neither trusts nor appreciates the false sense of tenderness – the snide foreplay – of it. He likes even less that, despite these misgivings of his mind, his body nonetheless seems incapable of responding negatively. Everything about it is menace and malice, and yet, it feels… good.

A new wave of dismay courses through him as he recognizes the unwelcome signs of his own long-neglected arousal. It shouldn’t be possible, can’t be – because _nothing_ about this is exciting, _nothing_ about this is something he wants – yet the throb of blood between his legs and the slow thickening of himself is hard to deny. 

The guard shifts behind him, coming in close between his forcibly spread thighs, and leans over to say, almost conversationally,

“You know, I’ve never fucked another man before.”

Ozai gags at the words, even though he knows, he _knows_ , has _always_ known, that this would be the evening’s ultimate turn. His heart hammers loudly in his ears, his thrumming veins go abruptly cold, and every muscle in his body clenches violently. A fresh surge of adrenaline-spiked horror courses through him, temporarily eroding his earlier exhaustion.

He struggles, calling up every ounce of strength left within him, succeeds only in cutting the skin of shoulders as they dig against the uneven floor and having his head be driven painfully against the stone. As he blinks away the explosion of coloured light that persists with or without his eyelid as backdrop, Ozai hears Kyeong spit heavily.

Then the guard’s hand is between his legs, the other resting at the small of his back – just below the reach of his own bound hands – and Ozai gasps raggedly at the intrusion of it, the touch that he knows to expect and yet cannot possibly be prepared for. Kyeong’s spit-slickened fingers trace a half-warm path up from the sensitive skin behind his testicles, the intimate touch wracking Ozai’s body in a shiver. Horrifyingly, he can feel a growing warmth in his abdomen, can feel the tip of himself jut against his stomach.

 _Go away, go away, go away,_ he thinks to himself in a stupid, pleading voice, not entirely sure to what he’s directing the thought. 

Kyeong moves his other hand from Ozai’s back to his ass, spreading the flesh open. He spits again, this time directly on the man before him, the shock of wet as it lands right above the ring of muscle causing Ozai’s hips to buck reflexively in attempted escape. The sensation of Kyeong’s finger then prodding, hooking inwards, somehow pulling him open, is invasive beyond imagining. Uncomfortable and very unfamiliar, but horribly not as unpleasant as it could be. Then comes the feeling of something else, much thicker, and finally the former Fire Lord manages to grind out a desperate,

“ _Stop._ ”

Not that Kyeong listens.

With a brutal shove, the other man buries himself, swearing loudly at the hot tightness of it. Ozai howls. _Now_ it’s very unpleasant. 

His first coherent thought after the violation is that it feels alarmingly like he’s taking a shit. His second thought is that it hurts worse than any shit ever possibly could, as though he is being torn in two. The base of his spine is on fire, he is being stretched beyond comprehension and yet his natural urge – whether the result of trying to reject the source of pain or the response of sheer panic – is to fucking clench.

Kyeong lets out a strained groan, exultant, and then begins to rock his hips in a series of thrusts.

It takes Ozai a moment to recognize the coppery smell of blood, his senses are so scattered, so utterly obliterated by the agony. It’s testament to how truly depraved, how desperate he is, that he almost welcomes this evidence of his own bodily damage – it eases some of the tearing friction, at least.

Of course, the blood slickens the walls of his ass for Kyeong too, and the guard revels in it, the wet heat unbearably inviting. He settles into a relentless rhythm, growling and huffing as he slams his hips forward and back, the fevered slapping of flesh almost echoing in the prison cell. Kyeong grabs Ozai’s waist to steady himself, his grip altering the angle of his entrance slightly, and suddenly Ozai is shouting wordlessly.

The first cry was involuntary – practically ripped out of his stubborn throat – but after that initial jolt of something deep and _not painful_ within him, Ozai can no more keep the shameful sounds from passing his lips than he can command the tides. He despises himself for it, despises the weakness of noise, the illicit knowledge that hidden within him is some point of pleasure only a man could reach. That part of him which has detached itself, which had whispered thoughts of surrender, now tries to rationalize. He has been through enough. It is only natural to try and find reprieve where he can.

Except that he _doesn’t want it._

From behind him, Kyeong speaks through panting.

“You – you want to know what I think, little bird?” He punctuates the question with a particularly mean thrust, groping the left half of Ozai’s rear as he does so.

“I think you like it.”

A snarl is halfway through Ozai’s teeth, but is transformed into an embarrassing sound all too like a whimper when one of the guard’s hands slides down from its anchored position at his hip and curls around the hardening length of his cock.

“Stop,” he gasps again, “stop. Stop stopstop _stop_!”

Kyeong’s hand is hot, his grip firm, pumping in tandem to the uninterrupted pounding of his hips. He tugs down with the tips of his fingers, sweeping up with his thumb, shifting the skin to expose the head. The rough pad of his thumb traces circles against the most sensitive tip, finding and smearing the bead of moisture welling at the slit.

“Pathetic,” he breathes against Ozai’s neck. “Sozin’s own grandson, keening like a whore with another man between his legs. I wonder what he’d think of you.”

Sozin’s law against copulation between people of the same sex was not something that Ozai had often troubled himself over, nor in truth had his father. It was something left in place out of habit more than fervent endorsement, but at the mention of his grandfather’s name it was as though the man were suddenly in the room with them, watching.

Appallingly, the thought only makes him harder.

“Bad enough that you failed as a Fire Lord,” Kyeong continues from behind him, words breathless as his pace intensifies. “But this? You’re a fucking disgrace, Ozai. You’re failing at being a good, proper Fire Nation citizen _right now_.”

He squeezes, coaxing out more leakage to drag with his thumb.

“Agni, you’re almost wetter than a woman.”

Ozai’s shattered sense of logic grabs the word and runs with it, abruptly and quite against his will forcing thoughts of Ursa into his head. He is confronted with an onslaught of disjointed ponderances – if he had ever hurt her the way he is being hurt now, if their coupling was always like this, whether she would be disgusted or gratified to see him like this now.

He is horrified at himself. There’s something wrong, something taboo about thinking of her when he is like this.

It’s too much. The warring sensations of pleasure and pain, the humiliation of it all regardless. Ozai stiffens, tries to fight the tightening sensation in his balls, but then Kyeong pounds into that hatefully sensitive spot within him and he can do nothing to stop himself from peaking. His stomach catches most of the mess, the thick pulsations a welcome, wretched relief. 

With his face pressed into the ground, Ozai lets out a loud sob.

After several more frantic thrusts Kyeong makes an all-too-familiar noise, and then Ozai must contend with the fact that not only has another man spent his throbbing load inside him at both ends, he’s been forced to take his own pleasure from the act. He does not bother trying to stifle his cries of distress when Kyeong finally pulls out, letting hot blood and cum run down his legs.

His own cock is still weeping, still traitorously hard, his mouth flooded with fluids, even his nose a dribbling mess of mucus beneath teary eyes. Kyeong is right. He’s horribly wet, everywhere.

The hands hold his left leg loosen, and Lhao says,

“Right then, little bird. It’s my turn.” 


End file.
